Computer Graphics is the technology with which pictures - in the general sense (synthetic graphics as well as greyscale and color images) - are generated or acquired, managed, displayed, and processed in an application-oriented manner by means of computers, and with which pictures are also correlated with non-graphical application data.

The term »computer graphics« also implies the computer-aided integration and handling of these pictures synchronized with other data types; e.g., audio, text, and video (multimedia systems), and the advanced dialogue techniques associated with these data types.

Thus, today computer graphics is already the basic technology for accomplishing visualization and implementing interactive graphics dialogues for design and engineering applications (CAD, CAE, CAM, CIM, etc.), for printing, publishing, and office applications, for research and medical science, for media and visual communication, for geographical information systems (GIS), and for architecture or civil engineering applications.

Moreover, computer graphics is also the key technology for enabling important trends in computer science and information technology; e.g., for the development of new paradigms for working with computers (distributed, multimedia and cooperative applications, computer-supported cooperative work - CSCW), for the development and application of computer-generated environments (virtual reality, cyberspace), for the analysis and simulation of complex information (global information visualization), for the realization of intelligent inter-active graphics information systems (integration of graphics with AI methods, with neural networks, with wavelet algorithms, and with fuzzy-logic procedures), to name but a few.

Some of the important new topics and trends, which are increasingly recognized in the research of Computer Graphics are the use of Computer Graphics Technology for visualization, simulation, and animation of living structures, the visualization and dialogue management in mobile information systems, and the question of security of the transmission of pictures in all forms of the use of telecommunication (telecommunication applications).

As the technology for using pictures as a data type in a file for data compression and for presenting and interacting with large, heterogeneous user constituencies CG is also an enabling technology for the development, implementation, presentation, and use of the new information infrastructures (information highways, Internet, WWW, Online Services, etc.). Among many others, important topics in this context are VRML and JAVA.